"Campaigns and Battles" Topic

How important is the table top battle in a campaign? Should a campaign rely and be centered around the production and resolution of table top battles? Or are table top battles incidental, indifferent, and unimportant to the campaign?

For me it is the former. There's no point to having a campaign unless it's going to generate table top battles. If the resolution on the table top is unimportant to the campaign, then the campaign itself is the game, and-- another game entirely.

I think the answer is self evident. Why have a campaign if battles don't actually matter? Right?

I believe that the battles are the reason for the campaign. Sure, we could just set up the battles, but a campaign can add context (and give reasons to not fight to the death)

Honestly you could design it either way. I can imagine enjoying a campaign where the battles are small and fast – something along the lines of DBA but one step up in size and complexity. In this case the battles are secondary to the campaign. In that case, uninteresting battles can be done with a simple odds chart and just play the fun ones.

Or you can have a simpler campaign designed to generate battles with context. In this case the campaign should be pretty simple – point to point movement, and abstract logistics, etc. – but the battles would be as big and complex as desired. Uninteresting battles would need better resolution than an odds chart.

It's not an either / or.

If you don't want the battles, play a board game.

I'm not so sure about it being self evident. Part of the fun of some campaign games is to engage in decisions about maneuver, supply, recruitment, sieges, and whether refusing battle is better than gambling it all on the field.

I once read a quote something along the lines that 'battles are to campaigns as chapters are to books'.

If opposing forces meet during a campaign, they might not actually come to blows, but at some point they will have to fight each other.

I agree with that, pigbear but if the battles make little or no difference then what is the point. That is why I say it is self evident. If you don't have battles "count" then why play a campaign at all?

I lean towards the former also- Campaigns give context to table-top battles, not vice-versa.

Yes, hopefully it will all build up to a battle at the end, or a series of battles as the case may be. But ideally it won't just be a set of events along a linear narrative, like beads on a string. A good set of campaign rules will give much more flexibility in decision making.

Rich Bliss wrote:

If you don't want the battles, play a board game.

Absolutely. Boardgames give sweep, handle logistics, or can anyway, and the battles are easily managed

The majority favors table top battles. The question then becomes the control procedures between campaign and game. That is, what is the level of the campaign, (company wandering about the Normandy Countryside in WWII, Napoleon wandering around Europe in 18XX (either Napoleon) or Rome wandering around the Mediterranean in the 1st century.

What is the level of replacement, are forces simply lost, lost and gained, etc., and the level of intensity. That is, ALL encounters engendered must be fought out on the table top, or some of them decided by some abstract method.

And finally what is the entry point of the gamer in the game. Is he the emperor of Rome with all the attendant issues dependent on him, an army commander, a company commander, or does he handle everything from filling out a requisition for more ammo for his company all the way to dealing with the Senate.

Regardless of level of the game the question of what issues will the player be called upon to face.

For example in my "Narrative Campaigns" (don't take the standard definition of "narrative campaign") players enter the game at TWO levels. First is as the sovereign of a state, and make high level decisions there, and then they leave the game and re-enter as a table top general when the battles have to be fought. The tactical rules handle everything at that level, and are generally unremarkable compared to any other rules.

But let us return to the top level. The players as sovereigns write down their intentions and hands them in to me the Umpire. I compare them and decide what happens to each, and if they intersect or conflict, that is one player attacks another and the other objects, there is a table top battle engenderd. The "intentions" of the various players form the "narrative" along with the battle reports produced for each battle. These intentions are very brief and can be no more than 20 words in length. Responses to others intentions are allowed after the fact within certain options. For example, Jackson Jills says "I want to attack Bad Zu Wurst with an army and a brigade." Pete Zaria who runs Bad Zu Wurst said "I want my army to build a canal from Schlagzahne to Sachertorte" is using his army for that. Therefore he can respond to Jackson's attack with only two brigades.

The term "Army" and "Brigade" refer to "Strategic units" which are bundles of table top units. The exact constituencies of this are not important, nor are the rules for the governance. The point above is only for illustration as to how these issues come into play, and the control procedures. That is the limiting of decisions only to those issues pertinent to the level the player is at.

The point is I use a very simplified range of resources so we can get to the table top game as quickly as possible. On the other hand there is no need for complex campaign rules because the complexity comes from the player being able to do literally almost anything he wishes, and not just in a military vein, One player in one intention put a papier-mâché image of himself on the throne and went off to another land incognito searching for a new mistress. Another decided to go on a crusade against a non player controlled country, another after winning a battle decided to spend lavishly to create a vast monument to his victory out of the battlefield, almost like a theme park. Some may object to the whimsical nature of some of these intentions, but that's up to the players. They are only words sprucing up the actions, and other more proper titles might have been added.

I am sorry to go on, but I had to frame the case of the original question.

The problem comes then of how do you handle a large number of actions, and which are fought and which not. A small level campaign where one side is just wandering around an are with one force and it goes through a series of adventures like a party in an AD&D dungeon (this meeting our Company fights the beach bunkers, next week we fight the falschrimjaegers in the bocage, next week we play tag with the Tigers in the timber). On the other hand, if there are "multiple parts in motion" then control can become difficult.

This does not even get into decisions of what to do with the game or the campaign between table top sessions which involve a physical object questions (how do you pack up the game at the end of one sessiona and lay it out at the next.

I solved the problem to my satisfaction by using discrete objects manipulated in innovative ways, for example the "Army and Brigades," and the allowance of the players imagination to work freely (within limits). This was done because the most important part was the table top game. We wanted and insisted on table top battles and were far more interested in creating them and enjoying them than just making a huge campaign game.

I absolutely agree with Extra Crispy. You can have a campaign with battles beeing not so important or a campaign as a vehicle to have interesting tabletop battles. And you have to decide before what you and your players want.

The boardgame argument doesnt convince me. Double blind campaigns could not be played with a board game.

I would say, that simple board games are good for a campaign, that is centered around the battles. Npoleon by Columbia Games for exmple is a good campaign game for tabletop battles.

Dear Decebalus

I have that game. What do you do when you have one division of the allies against almost everything Napoleon has? Put on a woefully overmatched battle?

I'm not convinced on the board game argument either.

Having framed the game as "a way to generate table top battles" it sound like at times you have more battles than you can handle.

The problem comes then of how do you handle a large number of actions, and which are fought and which not.

I would create a simple matrix for battles that need to be resolved but that you don't want to put on the table top. Each side gives a "stance" kind of an overall mission to their force. (MegaBlitz the WW2 game would be a good model for this). Plot the stances in a grid. The resulting cell out lines possible outcomes, determined by die roll.

Example: Force A is small and chooses "Fighting Withdrawal." Player A is simply buying time for his army to muster, move or whatever. Meanwhile Player B chooses Normal Attack (versus demonstrate, probing attack or all out attack). The intersection of these gives outcomes from "Heroic Last Stand" to "Attacker Channels His Inner McCLellan." Now you roll the dice. As Umpire you just "decide" how to apply the result. In this case you roll an average number (say, 7 on 2D6). Since you have an army attacking a brigade you decide the brigade takes heavy casualties but retreats only one box, while the army takes light casualties but is slow in the advance. This would take 2 or 3 minutes and you;re on to the next one.

Example 2: Task Force Alpha (an army and a brigade) launches a normal attack against Zeta (an army). Stances are normal attack and normal defend. Roll of 2D6 yields a 10 – a big win for the attacker. So defender losses are moderate but he retreats two boxes. Attacker has moderate losses but advances two boxes with a successful pursuit, looking to complete the victory next turn.

I have that game. What do you do when you have one division of the allies against almost everything Napoleon has? Put on a woefully overmatched battle?

Redraw the campaign so that you move and fight comparative units.

The campaign is fun but the battles are why you do it

Dear Extra Crispy

Oh I already have that built into the campaign system I am using. The question is how do other people do it.
Otto

This is a subject very dear to my heart.

I believe that the interaction between the map and the tabletop is the most important aspect of wargame campaigns. If the campaign organiser does not consider, and solve, this problem before the campaign starts he will surely have problems when the first battle has to be resolved.

If you want to campaign an historical campaign I believe that a map based campaign where the battles are resolved without model soldiers would be the best answer.

However most of us want to play with our model soldiers. And battles are the natural outcome of campaigns. So how to transfer the map battle to the tabletop is the most important problem to be solved before the campaign starts.

Some years ago I took part in a couple of PBEM campaigns. They were great fun and I really enjoyed my role of corps commander and Napoleon respectively. However both campaigns came to an abrupt end when the first battle had to be fought as a wargame.

I decided to create my own campaign. The primary objective would be to provide interesting battles to wargame.

I started with the size of table I had available to wargame on. I then organised my collection of model soldiers into corps and armies. Next I wrote wargame rules which would allow me to fight the type of games I enjoy.

I then created the campaign maps. There were two type of maps. The strategic map covered all of Germany and Spain. They were hand drawn and copied from a road atlas. There was a grid and each square would have a named town or city. Each square was 21 miles, which would be one days march. It would also be one wargames table. So a wargame would last one campaign day.

The tactical map would cover an area of 9 squares on the strategic map. This would give a campaign area about the size of the Waterloo campaign. The map would have the nine named towns or cities shown on the strategic map. But the rest of the map would represent the exact wargames table. I use 2x2 foot square scenic boards on my table. Each square on the tactical map would show the scenery of one of those squares.

A lot of work to set it up. But once completed the campaign was simple. Map movement is done on the tactical map. As soon as there is a contact the table is set up using the nine squares on the tactical map.

Not sure that I described it all very well. But there is a comprehensive blog about the campaign which you will find here

link

When I started my campaign some years ago it was my intention to wargame all battles. It would be possible to do so because my campaign order of battle was also my collection of model soldiers.

However it soon because obvious that battles where one side outnumbered the other by two to one or more would make very boring and predictable wargames.

My answer is a simple campaign to determine the outcome. It's a long chart but only requires one dice roll. Rather than reproduce the whole thing here you can find it as Rule 09 in my campaign rules here

link

Dear Thistlebrow

I do all my campaigns without a map. I think it only gets in the way. Each country has its own "geomorphic" terrain expressed in hexes. This small geomorph is 18 hexes by 18 hexes. The defender in a battle can chose any square 6 hexes by 9 within it. Entry sides, etc. are all chosen by the player or the umpire. My use of "Strategic units" means that there can be wide diversity of forces but not so much that any match up would be uninteresting or a walkover.

Sounds like we work in similar veins.

Oh yes, like you the big work is done in setting up the campaign and creating the control pieces. Once that is done the actual campaign is easy.

Hi Ottoahtome

I used the maps because I wanted to run a PBEM campaign. The tactical map allows the player to pick his battlefield, knowing that the table would look exactly the same as the map.

I don't think that how the campaign is designed is too important, providing how the battles can be transferred from the campaign to the tabletop is solved.

Each army has four corps, and it is up to the player how he moves them around. Most players try to achieve odds in their favour, so it was not possible to avoid uneven battles. That is why I had to devise a simple way of fighting them.

All of the work of a campaign falls on the shoulders of the organiser, so it is essential that the administration is suited to his needs. Whilst it is important that the players enjoy the campaign their views must always come second to the organiser.

Incidently I see that I have given the wrong reference above for the combat rules. It should be rule 06.

For figures gaming I use a campaign system to generate battles.

If the system is going to generate ALL the battles, then I either:

1. do something abstract involving area movement and possibly just a linear progression a back and forth (like the KISS Rommel campaigns) with period appropriate considerations of force rotation, logistics etc.

2. use a boardgame or a historical narrative as a backdrop and just do a series of linked scenarios with some sort of force/loss carry forward. Sometimes I just read abook and replicate a series of interesting actions in sequence (like Raus's account of 6th Panzer in Lithania in 1941).

If the system is going to generate SOME of the battles, I just use a boardgame and only pick the interesting encounters to fight on the tabletop.

If the system is actually about the players running a campaign (as generals, national leaders or whatever), then I'll design a campaign game and forget about trying to fight all the battles on the table top. You can do strategic games with toys too.

I'm not too worried about fighting out battles from a campaign on the tabletop unless it's a handful – it tends to lose impetus and if there's fudging of battles anyway to avoid uneven matchups, then just draw random scenarios from a card deck.

As for running a campaign in itself, my preference is for one day campaigns, in a format such as a megagame. Whilst in some games the umpires might resolve all the combat behind the scenes, I've been involved in a few where you can resolve battles with some tactical choices in a short space of time. It certainly beats just adding up combat factors and looking at a CRT.

"I have that game. What do you do when you have one division of the allies against almost everything Napoleon has? Put on a woefully overmatched battle?"

I would play these battles with the boardgame rules. You could also play battles, that are to big, using the boardgame battles and only play for example the center as a tabletop battle.

Napoleon is a very deadly game, so you have to balance your tabletop rules with the boardgame somehow. But that IMO is absolutely doable.

For me, if the campaign mechanism is so simplified that it becomes a chart or line, why not just keep a tally of victories on a league table and use casualties/scenario objectives as an arbiter in the way that sports teams use goals and points and as outlined by Featherstone and co.? I can understand if you want to have a little context for battles, but player input in Otto's situation seems minimal and doesn't feel much like playing a campaign to me. You're playing a series of vaguely-related battles, with long periods between them and little uncertainty.

'What do you do when you have one division of the allies against almost everything Napoleon has?'

If I make bad decisions, then I should suffer in a campaign. If the division chooses to fight it's destroyed and removed from the campaign, with prisoners and standards displayed in Paris. Minimal casualties to the French, if at all. If I'm playing a campaign then ultimately I want to have some impact in terms of operational thinking and if I've got my forces into a position where the enemy has little chance of success then either they should be forced to retreat without giving battle and lose supplies, stragglers and siege artillery or maybe even concede. I would agree with thistlebarrow, that to really feel like you're dealing with a campaign, it's usually easier without the toy soldiers.

If I make bad decisions, then I should suffer in a campaign.

What is a 'bad' decision? If we assume the objective is to have reasonably balanced tabletop battles then the aim should be to have just that and the 'suffering/bad' arises from the loss of the battle. The issue described is how do you deal with an imbalance in forces; my suggestion is to not allow it to arise in the first place. The traditional DBA campaign system seems a good basis for any period. Each army becomes a corps and a corps fight another corps.

You may assume the aim of a campaign is to have reasonably balanced battles. I would not, certainly if I were playing. Fudging battles defeats the purpose of the campaign experience and doesn't reward effective planning, making rules familiarity and dice more effective than operational thinking.

If you actually want to play a game that attempts to simulate at least some aspects of a campaign, rather than battles with a veneer of context then surely you would prefer to avoid reasonably balanced battles wherever possible, with the odds in your favour? As I said, this may well involve binning the figures. Otherwise, the DBA or league table approach is fine, as is Otto's.

Edit – to summarise, I prefer to keep my tabletop battles and campaigns separate. They serve different purposes for me.

Actually, having had a look at the Snappy Nappy threads, if you're playing with people who are very familiar with the rules and games resolve quickly enough, I'd give it a go with figures, although you lose some of the flexibility by having pre-arranged battle areas or have to produce some more generic battlefields to keep the pace up. We can't replicate true campaign conditions in a wargame campaign, but time pressure alone can make for a more engaging experience.

Most of my recent campaigns have been with people who aren't generally wargamers and often don't know much military history, so combat rules are heavily abstracted and aim to resolve a combat in around 15 minutes maximum.

Having done this for years, the answer is not so simple as you think. I have tried all sorts of campaign and game styles and most of them fall apart because the most important factors were not considered. We'll get to that in a moment. Most of you are speaking about very "low grade" campaigns of a pair of opponents in a well defined war, like the Napoleon campaign, and most have also betrayed that they really don't use the strict rules of that campaign. The campaigns that I am talking about and am actually running is a very large scale campaign where players are sovereigns of nations with a lot of other players playing actively at the same time.

The most important factors in campaigns of that sort in my experience is not tactics, or strategy or supplies or all the other minutia but player participation. All the players are eager and excited about the battles, but doing the back-work to the campaign not much. In Multiplayer games the rule seems to be out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Remember I am talking here about the CAMPAIGN, not the table top battle and rules.

Out of 10 players in the game

One will read the campaign rules, work with them, work the strategies, engage with the game and really be enthusiastic, send in their initial dispositions and start up info and send in his moves on time.

Three will gain a familiarity with the rules, understand what is going on, and participate, and will about 75% of the time send in their rules and moves. They sent in their start-up info but you can tell they did it slapdash and you have to work with them to clean out the bugs.

Two more will send in their set up and buying work, but it's clearly a rushed thing. They will send in a move or two but always something else will intrude, their kids recital, work, their cat has a condition and has to be taken to the cat whisperer. They were eager and excited at the start but life got in the way.

Two more will be the same as the last two, only once they suffer even a minor defeat will stop playing simply because they don't want to do the work to "come from behind" and make a recovery. They will drop out through laziness."

The rest you never hear from again in the matter of the campaign. They were just as excited at the rest, but once they got the free stuff their interest waned.

They key is not in the campaign, but the players and keeping them energized and interested.

The experience I have had with this through four clubs and three different sets of wargame guys who gamed at my house is.

1. Everyone has enough going on in their lives to keep them busy from dawn to dusk, and from dawn to dawn if they didn't have to sleep. Therefore "war games" and whatever has to be done in the rubric of "war games" has to be done within the time allotted for it, which means the once a month/week meeting when everyone gets together. A few people will set time aside, but no one is as crazy as me and is as obsessed about gaming as me, and will do the work.
That's why I made my system now to be able to be run with a minimum of time, 15 minutes or so after a battle is over.

2. Equity is a principle you cannot afford to ignore. Few people want to be under the gun all the time. Few of them like to be the punching bag. We all know the old "balance of power" argument where if one player is getting to strong the others have to bind together to reign him in. I have NEVER seen that happen. Far more often players will pile on to the losing side like vultures to get their pound of flesh, or toady to the winning player in an attempt to get something easy than league up against him. That's a real-life strategy too, except it's not fun for the guy being piled on, and serious harm can be done to friendships. I've seen people leave clubs and groups over that. I don't want to pride myself on a realistic campaign but lose friends over it.

Younger gamers are more prone to the above than older gamers. They are of the "reboot" generation. In a computer game? Losing a little? Getting tough? NO PROBLEM! just "reboot" the game start over and don't make what turned out to be a wrong decision again! Or, better yet! Engage the "cheat" routines to get back what you lost and bash on!

So after decades of this and running up against it that's why I crafted the table top rules I use, which work very well, (I'll get to them in a moment) I developed the campaign rules.

The key to the two is the "entry point" of the player. The first is as the sovereign of a state. The gamer enters by giving his intentions as that august person, which tells me generally what he wishes to do. These intentions are gathered at the END of one table top battle. I have them all there, and no one is allowed to leave till I have them. Then I take all the intentions and consider them and decide what the NEXT table top battle will be from them. In this the campaign structures I have put in place have a roll, which again I will get to in a moment. Everyone goes home and shows up next month and I've set it all up. Here they "enter the game" as commanders of the two opposing armies, generally "wing" or detachment commanders. We have the battle, and again at the end of it new intentions are made (if called for).

The advantage of this is all the heavy lifting is done by the umpire (me) and the players are faced with a straight-forward battle. My job is significantly helped by the rules ALWAYS producing a clear-cut victor by game end and I don't have to "call" a game or render an unfair decision. The advantage for the gamers is they all have fun and lose ANY sense of loyalty to their own side. Players fight as hard for the enemy as for themselves. The campaign also allows them to set the high-level priorities and direction of the wars and they like that too and see no conflict.

Attention always seems to be on the table top battle. In the campaign game ALL battles must be resolved before a new set of intentions can be asked for. In the last set of intentions FOUR battles were engendered. Over the last two months one each was resolved, and two more were done at "The Weekend" convention in Lancaster. I feel that one good part of the system I use is the "Strategic Units" idea which prevents walkovers. In one of the games, which we fought out here at home an Army and a Brigade of the kingdom of "Spam" (Viva Espamia) attacked an Army of the Empire of Ikea. The Ikean player (me, it's a non player controlled country) knew four players were attacking him, and he did not meet the enemy with equal forces, wanting to beef out his resources in the other battles. He hoped to capitalize on his ability as the defender to chose the terrain and position to make up for his deficiency of forces. That battle was fought and he managed to limit the Spamish player to a single victory point. (The winner of the battle gets the points the loser of the battle loses nothing.

In the second battle fought at the Weekend, a different country, part of the Spamish "crusade" against the Muslim Ikeans, which was Bad Zu Wurst, attacked, also with an army and a brigade, and was met by two brigades of Ikeans. A heavy cavalry Brigade, and an Elite Brigade. The Ikeans again had good defensive terrain. In terms of pure power an Army is about a force strength of 3, while a brigade is 1 so it was 4 to 2. In this battle the field had two large woods on each flank, with a river running diagonally across it with a bridge about in the right center, and below it the river was "allegedly" unfordable. The one side did very well in maneuver and pushed its most powerful units across the one bride and assaulted the Ikeans, but the Ikeans through good tactics (and die rolls) an carefull counter-attack were able to slowly push the Bad Zu Wurstians back and actually force them back on the unfordable river and destroy many of their units. Numbers did tell after a while and the Ikeans lost the battle eventually and gained the Bad Zu Wurstians gained 2 Victory points. The Last battle next month at my house will see the last two Ikean brigades facing only an Army of "The Neverneverlands" agin with defensive terrain and it will be a near run thing.

The advantage to the system is that while the Ikeans are the victims of an attack by FOUR powers in none of the battles are they hopelessly overmatched and in all three so far they came quite close to victory. Again, while their enemies gained one or two points they did not lose anything. This gives the players some strategic control of allocation of forces (without the tiresome use of a map) and the benefits of defensive terrain and flanks which can limit an enemies superiority. Of course as I was standing in for the Ikeans strategically no player was getting beat on, and of course they coalition shall feel the ire of the umpire for attacking a defenceless NPC in short order.

The campaign allows, as I said, players to gain victory points by other means than battle, and also to reduce a players victory score. "Playng to a Leaders personality" can get you a victory point. So for example the King of Flounce, who isn't interested in war and statecraft , after losing a battle, "putting a papier-mâché image of myself on the throne and going to Sweeta to look for a new mistress" might be one way, and in "Spite and malice" attacks one playe could assert that "Faustus the Grump of Bad Zu Wurst" is a rulthess tyrant who has assassinated his political opponents'" would if unchallenged lose a strategic point, but he was allowed his defense and said "I hire Voltaire to compose an essay showing all my enemies have died of natural causes, for what is more natural than to die when bullets pass through the heart!"

Otto, I'm not sure what you mean by saying people have 'betrayed that they really don't use the strict rules of that campaign'. Obviously few of us insist on people sleeping in a field tent or periodically amputating participants' limbs.

I'm pleased that you have found something your group enjoys, but I would suggest that you are not really replicating high level political thinking to any real degree and there is a disconnect between decisions made at that level and the tabletop in your game. You have a system for generating battles rather than a campaign system. Going by your OP, I can see why you have done so. I don't tend to use figures in tabletop battles in my campaigns but there are others who do and I have said I wouldn't rule it out, based on what I've seen recently. I think it's a false dichotomy to say that it's one or the other.

I assume your players know that equity is important to you, so this also means that whatever they choose, you will interpret their intentions to ensure as even a battle as possible. Their flashes of political genius are as inconsequential as the their most stupid suggestions. There is little really at stake, so getting people to invest may be harder.

As I said above, if the aim is to have a little context to your games, that's fine, but it seems that the setup is really designed for you to create a fiction to play with rather than any real agency by players. Again, it suits you all but it hardly seems to replicate real decision-making to any degree.

I would suggest that equity in games is less important than you state – certainly the number of players who seem to prefer scenarios on the table to points systems seems to say that many people are happy to judge success based on victory conditions or the historical outcome. If it is the case for battles, then why not campaigns? I know that you only play Imaginations, which makes historical comparisons difficult, but most gamers of my acquaintance have a pretty good idea of how they've done. Again, obviously if you only intend to play one ongoing campaign forever it may be less important, but I find that a time-limited campaign can be much better for focussing players' attentions. You are right that real world issues can get in the way, but I find that having something at stake can be a great motivator.

There is at least one alternative way to involve players in political decision-making with consequences, which also provides ways to maintain player engagement and that lays in megagaming. megagame-makers.org.uk There is the opportunity for players to take on a political, diplomatic or military role to suit their tastes; games are resolved in one day and with upwards of fifty players in a game, there is plenty of fog of war. Whilst the game designer spends a good deal of time in prep, once the game is underway, it usually requires limited umpiring for games to flow. Often the decisions are at a high level and the detail is abstracted, allowing players to actually consider longer-term planning.

Games can vary in the amount of whimsy, from 100 people re-fighting Market Garden in Holland, through a Renaissance game about religion and authority, to 300 players dealing with how world governments deals with the arrival of aliens. Some games and roles are more engaging and demanding than others, but then you've only given up one day at a time. I've yet to see a better system for really grasping why some apparently ridiculous decisions were made in history. There is usually a lack of victory points, but then this comes back to the scenario and individual player briefings.

Dear Ben

An interesting response, humorous in fact.

By "betraying" I mean that it is obvious people do not hone to the exact letter of the rules but make wide adjustments and allowances for situations and the local conditions of the group and game. That means they are far more "notional" than people might like to admit.

Replacing high level political thinking? Who wants to do that? No war game can do that and no war game is realistic or brings in all the factors engaged in such things. I stand with Don Featherstone and Stuart Asquith who both said "War Games has nothing to do with real war." If it has nothing to do with real war, than any idea of replicating high level decision making is pure self delusion. Having been part of and a witness to high level decision making I can assure you, it has nothing to do with logic.

As for equity in games, it is important to me only because it is important to the players. I'm happy for you if you have dedicated masochists who enjoy unbalanced situations but most people I play with are in it for the fun, and that means that they have some chance of victory in the normal sense of the ting, not games which are essentially "You lost 90% of your force but you held up the enemy for 10 minutes, so therefore you win. Don't you feel good? Further from the cases I said, no one likes being ganged up on by six players, no matter how realistic it is. Tell ya what. Next time do a game and say to five of the gamers, You are France, Germany, Russia, England, and Hungary, and to the sixth, "You are Poland, and this is 1939, and we are testing the result if France and Britain sided with the rest in carving you up. Yah… take a look at his expression and see how much he likes it.

Obviously the social aspect is unimportant to you. It is to me. In the groups and clubs I have been, over-attention to the seriousness and the alleged realism of a game or a campaign has produced battles that are woefully uneven and arguments ensued some of which have broken friendships, and the whole club. This is a silly, stupid hobby, playing with toy soldiers and nothing more. Long ago I gave up the delusion that there was anything related to real life in these games or that if I won a game of Afrika Korps I was an undiscovered military genius. In fact, even when in the service and business when I played in these high level simulations it became very obvious that it had been constructed to "prove" a preconceived idea, usually what the big boss thought of was reality. Anyone who says he has produced a simulation is perpetrating a fraud.

Your last sentence says it all and betrays the utter failure of gaming to understand reality in any meaningfull sense. "I've yet to see a better system for really grasping why some apparently ridiculous decisions were made in history."

The answer is not to be found in gaming, which presupposes a rational subset of reality."

The answer is that people do not think rationally-- ever. Oh yes, you and I can sit here and talk about the ontological principle, or Joe Yabatz' familial problems for hours in logical and reasoned terms like two medieval doctors of theology. But when it comes to ourselves and our own, our likes and dislikes, passion rules and reason goes out the window. Most of the time decisions are made high and low, Joe Yabatz or the Emperor of the World, through lust, envy, sloth, greed, gluttony, anger, pride, pity, hope, terror, desperation, or fear. Those are the passions. Reason and logic has nothing to do with this. Gaming like it does means you are far deeper into neverneverland than Mr. Anderson or Mother Goose.

My proof of course is the present presidential campaign which is a compendium of all those things.

The high level decisions I see my players making are no different and no worse (or better) than those real life decisions makers making.

I'm sorry that apparently you only play with people who want a balanced scenario every game Otto, but as ever you present your experiences and statements as empirical fact and others' differ. You rail against the 'reboot generation' making life easy for themselves, but surely every time you fudge a scenario so that it's even, you are doing that yourself?

I think it's clear that your definition of fun is very fixed and I suspect I prefer a broader range of games and experience than you. I'll play tabletop battles as well, but get different things from different games. Just because you don't find something fun though, doesn't mean that everyone else agrees. I find little humorous in bad puns in Imaginations, but knock yourself out, Otto. I'm not sure why others are condemned as masochists because they have fun in playing games in a different way to you.

'If it has nothing to do with real war, than any idea of replicating high level decision making is pure self delusion.'

You are of course entitled to your opinion on how aspects of wargames compare to reality, but it seems to show a wilful ignorance of what others do, including professional wargamers. You make a rather big assumption, based on your own prejudices and some very old-school authors, whose experience was of tabletop games and very basic campaigns. You see wargames as an opportunity to retreat from reality and weave a fiction for your players to suit yourself, but that is only one perspective (and one I find strange given your aversion to novels).

I would agree that wargames cannot replicate every factor of reality, but then I don't see that they need to. Even if a scenario does nothing more than help someone understand the perspective of someone else, it may well have achieved its goal. For a consideration of the pros and cons, feel free to have a look at link

My point about ridiculous decisions seems to have bypassed you entirely though as you have just supported it. It can be easy to read historical accounts and wonder at seeming ineptitude or confusion. You play a closed-map game in which you're making a decision based on incomplete information, following a chain of command you might disagree with and with a grudge about the colleagues who should have supported your attack last turn and with very limited time to complete your orders. You begin to appreciate that there are many factors behind decision-making and that no matter their rank or station, it's humans behind these decisions.

I can think of fewer games with less rational thinking than a megagame, especially when you are comparing it with the 100 foot general syndrome on the tabletop and a steady rate of play.

The Poland '39 game? Probably a committee or matrix game rather than a full campaign, but sure, why not? 40+ people played out the Washington Conference recently. Some were on a hiding to nothing but loved the drama and tension regardless. Does that make them masochists? Not really, they're more engaged in the process of the game, the negotiations and the deals, than in 'winning' or victory points. I would have thought that you would have loved that attitude, but I suspect it would bring back bad memories of Diplomacy for you.

You make an interesting (and erroneous) assumption in saying that obviously the social aspect is unimportant to me. Where did you get that idea? Playing a game with 50+ players and in which you have to talk to people to get results rather than simply rolling dice seems like rather a social activity to me. You may well have no interest in that aspect but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Yup, my definition of fun is fixed. Here it is.

Fun is engaging in an activity that you like to engage in instead of all other activities, and which while you are engaged in it do not want to be engaged in any others.

It's fixed in that it depends on enjoyment, and enjoyment socially with others. in preference to all others, and that means that all must be able to play.

Engaged in several instances of game like your describe. Never saw them work. They always ran off the track when left to the players and the umpires always had to reset the game and tell the players what they really wanted to do. After a while the players just let the umpires play the game.

Read the article. Pure crap. Has nothing to do with the recreational game that is war games as we know it. This is the type of bilge consultant companies use to bilk good money out of other business and the government by telling them what they want to hear. Been through dozens of these when I was in business. They always were eager to find out what the opinion of the guy who was writing the checks was. Stragnely--- the simulation they always came up with was exactly what he said. In any case those types of games haven't the slightest interest for me. I'm interested in fun. As I said in the earlier posts. the games run quite well where the weaker side is never worse than a 1 to 2 on the defensive.

Besides, you can take all the theory and bloviation and hypoth4esizing about decision making and theoretical postulization and it doesn't match up to the FACT that in six months of the campaign, a dozen battles and actions, all of which were fought to a conclusion by a dozen players not one of them has complained, carped, found fault with the system and rules and all of them have had a great time, lots of laughs, smiles, and are eager to continue. Not only that their imaginations are energized and they are eager to pursue each new battle and pampaign intention.

Those are concrete positive results not theoretical excellence, and that's all that counts with me, that my friends are having fun.

'Has nothing to do with the recreational game that is war games as *I* know it'

Fixed that for you Otto. Judging from the rest of your comment on the article, I assume you didn't actually read it properly, as I expected. He points out times when games give erroneous conclusions. How about this then? link Hobbyists and professionals in that one. Or don't they count as wargamers because sometimes they take it more seriously than you do? I know that some of them are quite happy to play Little Wars variants and WH40K from time to time too, so maybe it's not quite as cut and dried as you make out.

'Fun is engaging in an activity that you like to engage in instead of all other activities, and which while you are engaged in it do not want to be engaged in any others.'

I would concur with that. Your fun is not necessarily the same as everyone else's though. The same person might find fun in different ways at different times, depending on their mood or who they are with. Agreed? I would suggest that anyone who can only find fun in one very specific manner at any time is obsessive at best.

'It's fixed in that it depends on enjoyment, and enjoyment socially with others. in preference to all others, and that means that all must be able to play.'

I'm not sure what relevance this has? I fail to see why people would continue turning out for the games I describe if they weren't enjoying them.

'Engaged in several instances of game like your describe. Never saw them work.'

You need to get out more. Or just admit that other recreational gamers have been able to make them work for nearly 40 years. I'm not talking about theory – I'm talking about thousands of people participating in the games I linked you to – and nearly all recreational wargamers.

You like your players playing your game the way you want them to in your world and that's fine Otto. I fail to see why you need to justify your choices by claiming that players are lazy/stupid or that people who don't subscribe to your view are objectively wrong or not *real* wargamers.

EDIT: I'm not sure where I claimed your players don't enjoy your games. I've never met them. Please point it out.

So when you two are finished, where did the rest go as far as workable mechanics to bring campaigns and table top together? I like the idea of smaller engagements being decided off-table, leaving precious gaming time for bigger battles

Dear Marc

My methodology doesn't really generate smaller engagements. As I said, the Army/Brigade system yields small engagement of say a Brigade versus a Brigade, which is 7 units on a side, which is not that small. For this a simple dice system is used.

The mechanics are "workable" because much is left up to the umpire to decide. Thus in the open-ended "intentions" system the umpire is free to determine the outcomes, within limits. The umpire MUST work within the limitations of what the players have desired and the "resources" they devote to the intention. The rules of he campaign thus are only 12 pages long, but that includes all tables, charts, illustrations etc.

To give you an example,

Flounce says I wish to send an Army and a Brigade against Gulagia. Gulagia was doing something else, making a diplomatic ploy which was unconnected with Flounce. He is therefore allowed to respond to Flounce's thurst with whatever resources he has. He chooses an Army and a Brigade. (In the game game the maximum number of Strategic units one can have in any battle is two, only one of which can be an army. However, Gulagia's special ability is vast space, which means anyone attacking it must have ONE of his units be a wagon brigade. This means that Flounce has to carry extra supplies, but a wagon brigade only has two of its seven units with a lot of battlefield utility (the rest being wagons). So he is attacking uphill. OK, the umpire then evens it up a little by giving Flounce a bit more defensible terrain. The mechanics make the decision of the intentions a matter of five minutes.

In the ensuing battle, Flounce is fighting a bit of an uphill fight, but in the actual battle that transpired he was able to hold Gulagia to a draw. In effect then the game saves time by cutting out all the usual clutter betweent he ultimate decision to do something made by the player as a king, and the battle that ensues from these intentions. Thus in the above there is no need for long, laborious supply rules, record keeping and the like. The whole of it is stored in a small box 9 by 5" in fifteen small sized envelopes.

Finished Marc? I thought it was just getting started.

Anyway, I'll give you a couple of examples of the sort of system that we've worked on recently in my group that could find applications elsewhere. These were born out of a desire to avoid stacking up counters and throwing in a modifier or two before rolling a dice.

The first is from a Napoleonic system that will get a run out this weekend in Huddersfield for the Jena campaign. link The map game is very simple – orders given to umpires who resolve movement in the back room before feeding back to commanders. When you bump into someone you transfer to a table with your brigades, which are represented by mdf counters with relevant information. These could have had figures on but for simplicity's sake they have pictures of inkwashed figures. The 2'x2' battle boards are hand drawn maps of generic battlefields with crosses indicating a grid system for movement. Umpires pick the most appropriate board and the defender chooses their side. Brigades are given orders and there is a simple tactical game to be played out, with the added bonus that the map game will be continuing whilst you're fighting, so reinforcements may well arrive at some point during the day and more battleboards may need to be added. It should take 15 minutes or so for a couple of divisions on either side to come to a result, if undisturbed.

An alternate system I developed for a VBCW game was more about initial deployment and certain unit characteristics rather than tactical movement. I knew I had quite a few new players with no military gaming experience but also wanted something they could play unaided. I came up with something and then realised I'd re-discovered SCRUD which you can download from Tom's page here: mapsymbs.com/scrud.zip

It didn't really have the flavour I wanted for a thematic game like VBCW though, so after a chat with a friend, I developed a game with A0 battleboards, which pretty much walked players through combat, including options around whether to keep a reserve, whether armoured cars should be used as recce, etc. plus factors such as tank shock and different unit characteristics. All units were infantry or mechanised. Artillery, air and anti-tank guns were represented by resource cards rather than tracking separate ammo and additional unit counters. Petrol was paid for before movement and ammo counters were carried by units. I'd replace the petrol costs with a unit upkeep cost instead in future. Battles on the day were up to about 15 units and finished in 10 minutes or so. There were also additional tactics cards that players played and could accrue as they grew in experience.

You can find a youtube video of the whole military campaign here YouTube link (it was an open map system, with a 2m x 5m hex map of northern England, based on a 1938 road map and printed onto vinyl).

The political game involved a mix of a mechanical campaigning system for donations from urban areas (complete with scandal and political intelligence cards), as well as the higher level freeform negotiations and requests for overseas assistance (which were going well for the People's Republic of South Yorkshire, until Hull reneged on a deal and kept a convoy full of Soviet weaponry for themselves). We had about 70 participants in total, with 16 player teams in 4 factions scattered across the map and played out about 3 months of campaigning in 6 hours. The political masters called a ceasefire shortly before we finished, much to the chagrin of some commanders, but the peace talks were breaking down, even as the bell rang. Pics can be found here: link

It looks like I'll be running a follow up – I haven't decided whether it's to be VBCW: North and South or The Midlands Strikes Back yet.

Dear Marc

A picture is worth a thousand words and an artifact worth a thousand pictures. If you're interested in the campaign system send me your snail-mail address (postal delivery address) to me at sigurd@eclipse.net and I'll send you out the booklet which you can look over which will give you a good idea, only 12 pages, all charts, diagrams and illustrations within that. I can't send you all the control cards and sheets, that would be more expensive, but you can look it over if you want and decide if you'd like to pursue it further.

For me, a key part of the fun of our hobby is to have plenty of interesting decisions to make during a game. A campaign can offer decisions of a different kind and different level from those in a tabletop game.

I have tried both running and playing in campaigns designed to be resolved by fighting tabletop battles. While I accept that these can work, in my experience they have generally been unsatisfactory for one reason or another, and satisfied neither the campaign objectives nor the tabletop battle objectives. These days I prefer to keep campaigns and battles separate.

I've ruminated on this a bit in a blog post about the campaign I'm currently running, in which I as umpire resolve all the battles with a simple CRT and some arbitration, while the players get to concentrate on being megalomaniac despots:

link

For tabletop battles these days I almost always fight historical scenarios. They therefore have a ready-made campaign context, and the victory conditions reflect it. When we link them as a campaign, they still follow the historical script, with victory in one battle giving the winning side a small advantage in the next (say 5% more troops, or reinforcements arriving earlier, or some enemy troops being already demoralised, etc). This keeps the games balanced and interesting.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
link

My last campaign was set in 1870. I was the Russians competing with the British in th Great Game. We used the map from the Strategy & Tactics magazine game. The Russians ended the first campaign season in control of Kabul. The campaign rules were a simplified version of the magazine game & the tactical rules were a modified version of Fields of Honor (one of the all time best 19th century rule sets, now out of print.) The strategic turns were as good as the tactical battles. We have always included a quick combat routine, based on either number of stands or troop costs & overrun combat rules so that uninteresting battles & complex life events don't hold us up.

JPK